Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education. The book is here!

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The long awaited reader, Natural Born Learners is finally here.

Read all about it!

January 2014—Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education edited by Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko and Carlo Ricci.

Humans are natural learners. This collection of essays challenges much of mainstream beliefs about how people learn, encouraging the reader to consider deeply the need for learners to be trusted and listened to. Many of the authors in the book begin from a learner-centered, democratic perspective. Divided into three sections, the first part of the book deals with what constitutes a learner-centered approach to education. The second section addresses how some have implemented this approach. In the last section, learners who have lived learner-centred learning share narratives about their experiences.


Reviews

“For those who want to restore natural learning—whether for themselves, their children, or all of society—this book is a great resource. We can all learn here from contributors who have helped to explain how natural learning works, from those who have helped to make such learning more possible in today’s world, and from those lucky individuals who grew up learning naturally.”
- Peter Gray, Research Professor of Psychology at Boston College and Author of Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self- Reliant, and Better Students for Life.
 
“This book explores the roots of self-direction and offers a series of highly insightful and creative ways to help people be open, peaceful, natural learners. The roots of democratic living are fostered by what is said here. School administrators, teachers, parents, students, politicians and virtually all citizens will benefit from reading this. I most highly recommended this unusually fine and stimulating book.”
- Conrad Pritscher, Professor Emeritus, Bowling Green State University

Background:

Most of the pieces in this book are derived from interviews aired on the Radio Free School program that ran from 2002 to 2008 on 93.3 fm CFMU in Hamilton. It is divided into three sections:
1. What is unschooling/natural learning/self-determined learning;
2. What does it look like in practice, and;
3. The stories of those who unschooled and are now adults.

Foreword                                                                                            
Introduction                                                                                        

Part 1  What is Self-Determined Learning and Unschooling?                                                                                                                                              
Chapter 1    Schooling: A Highly Questionable Practice                                                              
                    John Taylor Gatto
Chapter 2     You Don’t Have to go to Grow:                                                                        
                    Growing Without Schooling
                    Pat Farenga
Chapter 3     An Education in the Age of Climate Change                                                                                            
                    Satish Kumar
Chapter 4    A Learning System Fit for a Democracy                                                          
                    Roland Meighan
Chapter 5    An Interview About a Sense of Self                                                                        
                   Susannah Sheffer
Chapter 6    Trust, Not Education                                                                    
                   Aaron Falbel
Chapter 7   A Conversation About the Magical Child                                                          
                  Joseph Chilton Pearce
Chapter 8   Hold Onto Your Kids                                                                    
                   Gordon Neufeld
Chapter 9   The Price of Praise                                                                  
                   Naomi Aldort
Chapter 10 The Words We Use:                                                                  
                   Living as if School Doesn’t Exist  
                   Wendy Priesnitz

Part II   Lights. Camera. Action! (This is How it Works).                          

Chapter 11      We Don’t Need No Education,
                        We Don’t Need No Thought Control:
                        Reflections on Achieving Musical
                        Literacy and the Importance of Unschooling                                                  
                        John. L. Vitale.
Chapter 12      What Does it Mean to be Educated?                                              
                        John Taylor Gatto
Chapter 13      Democratic Schools                                                        
                        Jerry Mintz
Chapter 14      Aware and Alive                                                          
                        David Albert
Chapter 15      From Albany to Now                                                        
                        Mary Leue
Chapter 16      Guerrilla Learning                                                          
                        Grace Llewellyn
Chapter 17      Getting Kids on the Streets                                                      
                        Matt Hern
Chapter 18      Improving Unschooling through
                        Strewing and Spirituality                                                        
                        Sandra Dodd
Chapter 19       Learning Together by Starting an Educational Co-operative        
                        Katharine Houk
Chapter 20       The Everyday Lives of Black Canadian
                        Homeschoolers                                                          
                        Monica Wells Kisura
Chapter 21      The Praxis of SelfDesign as a New Paradigm for
                        Learning                                                                  
                        Brent Cameron
Chapter 22      Home Education in Quebec                                                      
                        Christine Brabant
Chapter 23       Learning From Within and From All That is
                        Around Us                                                          
                        Seema Ahluwalia and Carl Boneshirt

Part III  They’ve Grown Up                                                                   

Chapter 24      Life is a Field Trip and You don’t Need a Permission Slip                                                                  
                       Dale Stephens
Chapter 25      Pioneer Unschooler                                                                
                       Kate Cayley
Chapter 26     Growing up Weird                                                                
                       Kate Fridkis
Chapter 27      I Love my Life                                                          
                        Eli Gerzon
Chapter 28      I’m Educated                                                                  
                       Candra Kennedy
Chapter 29      Redefining Success                                                                  
                       Jessica Claire Barker
Chapter 30      Unschooling Experience                                                        
                       Peter Kowalke
Chapter 31     I’m Unschooled and Yes, I Can Write                                                    
                       Idzie Desmarais
Chapter 32     The Subtle but Radical Frame of Being a
                       Contributor Versus Being Successful                                                    
                       Sean Ritchey
Chapter 33     More Time is More Freedom                                                      
                       Brenna McBroom
Chapter 34     Motivation, Method, and Mastery: How I learned                                                  
                       Music Without Being Taught.                                                                        
                       Andrew Gilpin
                       About the Editors                                                        


Editors Biographies:

     Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko is a free-lance writer and blogger. She blogs extensively at Natural Born Learners (radiofreeschool.blogspot.com) and has founded Personalized Education Hamilton to facilitate self-determined learning in her community. She works for a not-for-profit environmental organization as a project manager and coordinator. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her husband and three children who were all unschooled for a time.
Visit her website to see other writing at bekoko.ca.

     Carlo Ricci is a professor of education and currently teaches in the Graduate Program at the Schulich School of Education, Nipissing University. He edits and founded the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning. He has written and edited a number of books including The Willed Curriculum, Unschooling, and Self-Direction: What Do Love, Trust, Respect, Care, and Compassion Have to Do With Learning; and Turning points: 35 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Stories (AERO, 2010) with Jerry Mintz; and The Legacy of John Holt: A Man Who Genuinely Understood, Trusted, and Respected Children (HoltGWS, 2013) with Patrick Farenga. He has also written numerous articles on unschooling and self-determined learning. He lives in Toronto, Ontario with his wife and two children.

Contact:
Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko
radiofreeschool@gmail.com
905 529 7408

Dr. Carlo Ricci
carlor@nipissingu.ca
(519) 752-1524 ext. 7510

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